BETWEEN THE LINES -- Merger Mania in the Media

Patricia Holt

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, September 3, 1995

With the mergers of Disney and ABC and Westinghouse and CBS -- and the proposed merger of Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting -- merger mania has struck at the heart of media coverage (again), which makes THROUGH THE MEDIA LOOKING GLASS, by Jeff Cohen and Norman Soloman (Common Courage; 275 pages; $11.95 paperback), about as hot as any taboo-busting paperback can get.

Both authors are veteran media critics: Cohen is founder and executive director of FAIR, the media- watch organization that publishes the eye-opening magazine of behind-the-microphone foul-ups called Extra! And Berkeley news analyst Solomon has not only published (with Martin A. Lee) a formidable guide to detecting bias in news media called "Unreliable Sources," he has injected a welcome note of humor in his delightful and alarming "The Power of Babble: The Politician's Dictionary of Buzzwords and Doubletalk for Every Occasion."

The authors have a knack for articulating questions that lie dormant in the midst of headline news. They note that Berkeley media critic Ben Bagdikian was seen as an "alarmist" a dozen years ago when he "predicted that mergers would one day reduce the number of corporations controlling most of the media to a mere half-dozen." Today, they note, "investment bankers on Wall Street make the same prediction," and quite routinely. Why don't we hear lively and continuing discussions about the core problem -- that media mergers are "good for business" but "bad for democracy"? Because big business is increasingly making the decisions, say the authors.

Take one part of the media empire: Didn't it seem, ask the authors, that just a few years ago "phone companies and cable companies would aggressively compete in offering a variety of audio- video-computer services to each household"? Well, "instead of the expected slugfest between phone and cable firms, we're seeing a lovefest." The authors point to TCI, the country's largest cable TV company, whose leader, John Malone, "a political conservative who has expressed admiration for Rush Limbaugh," makes decisions about content and competition that only the public should make. If your warning signals started flashing when you noted the word "conservative" and an association with Rush Limbaugh, the authors say those aren't warning signals at all: Somehow, people who cover the news have bought the myth that the media are too liberal and are either bending over backwards to prove the myth wrong or are themselves becoming more right wing.

"If the news media are liberal," ask the authors, "why did most outlets praise Clinton's selection of David Gergen, who advocated Reagan policies, while pillorying civil rights lawyer Lani Guinier? . . . If the news media are liberal, why have Clinton's meager tax hikes on the wealthy been referred to as 'soaking the rich' or 'class warfare,' but President Reagan's giveaways to the wealthy were euphemized as 'tax reform'?"

Uh-oh, if you think the reference to Reagan's tax policies as "giveaways to the rich" shows a liberal bias on the authors' part, you're right, and they don't care. They have thousands of facts to back up their criticism of what they see as consistently sloppy, stupid, cowardly, corporate-run media coverage, and if they indulge in a little name-calling of their own, so be it. Why, for example, on the 30th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin "incident" that launched the Vietnam War (an "incident" they aren't alone in saying was triggered by the United States), did the New York Times devote "a full-page spread to roughly three dozen anniversaries, including Chappaquiddick (25 years ago), Barbie dolls (35 years) and the bikini (50 years)" but make no mention of Tonkin? The reason, the authors note, is "the 1964 White House deception was swallowed by the national press" and nobody wants to admit it now.

If you haven't heard much about the huge labor strikes in Decatur, Ill., called by strikers the "Labor War of '94," that's because "big media institutions" often have labor problems of their own and dismiss workers' complaints, say the authors. If you think the discussion about affirmative action has been given even-handed treatment in the media, just look at news weeklies such as Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report: There you see a predominance of "white guys who lecture blacks." Standard coverage of crime is "attention-grabbing, assertive, scary . . . and inaccurate." The charges are relentless, supported by facts and quotes, quite disturbing and uncomfortable -- mighty welcome in these perilous merged-media times.

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